Please calculate what an ounce of gold would cost if
the US were still on the gold standard.
The total gold mined in the entire world in all history
will fit in four or five big semi trailers.

That means that the total US dollars that could be
backed by gold if the US government owned ever ounce
ever mined would probably be less than $2000 per US
citizen.
And since two-thirds of US currency is held
outside the United States, that means there would
be less than $700 per person in the US, so that the
dollar would be too scarce to support a thriving
economy.

Darned if I don't think some of the negative
writing has as it's underlying purpose, the downfall
of civilization as we know it.

If they were demanding payment in gold, there
would be no choice but to close the sale of gold by
the US government. France took all their gold
in the early 1960s which was stored in the US since
the before WWII, and the US government only
had so many ounces to start with.

So you are an expert on currency now?

And the price of gold had to follow the price of
silver, and it seems the Hunt brothers went broke,
and that brought sanity back to the metal hoarders.

Most of the world realizes that a dollar can be used
to buy part of the US, and real property is always worth
more than money.

What you should be concerned about is the interest
being paid on those securities, the oil producing nations
can live on the interest income, which may be more than
the oil revenue.

It sounds like you might enjoy that.

The price of oil is right at the verge of causing
a collapse of the world economy, those nations who
produce no oil at all are at more risk than the ones
that have a substantial production, regardless of
how much they use or import.

The US could very well be better off if it
imported nothing at all, China would instantly
become stagnant.
Energy and food are more important than
money, and the countries that don't have much
of either would really be better off without speculation
about currency exchange rates.

Post a source, I cut and pasted the above from the
text of the link I posted.

With most of the gold now coming from South Africa
and Russia, and most of that gold possibly already sold to
other countries, there might be some double counted gold,
but it doesn't matter, there just isn't enough gold for
the US to back it's currency, and no where near enough
gold for the whole world to use as a fixed price backing
of all currencies.

There are lots of people who think gold could be
used for backing currency, and there are lots of people
who think the Federal Reserve System is a privately
owned money monopoly, and they have not studied
the facts.

With credit cards as easy to get as they are, even
the antiquated efforts of the Fed and the US government
to control the money supply are futile.
As long as the GDP is 15 or 20 times the amount of
currency in circulation, there should not be a problem.
The nations that have little or no energy reserves
are the ones that should be working toward renewable
and nuclear, and France apparently saw the problem
soon enough to prepare.

"The best estimates available suggest that the total volume of gold mined
over history is approximately 153,000 tonnes, of which around 63% has been
mined since 1950. The upward trend in annual production is now leveling off,
due not least to a considerable slowdown in exploration spending in the late
1990s. Independent analysts are of the belief that mine output will remain
flat for the next few years and may even drop slightly." (Year-end 2004)

153,000 tonnes x 32,150.75 ounces/ton x .8875* = 4.37 billion ounces

*100% - 11.25% attrition.

Cumulative Gold Production = 4.37 billion ounces

Source 2:

[Only registered users see links. ]

"Of the estimated 150,000 tons of all gold ever mined, about 15% is thought
to have been lost, used in dissapative industrial uses, or otherwise was
unrecoverable or unaccounted for. Of the remaining 128,000 tons, central
banks hold an estimated 32,000 tons as official stocks, and about 96,000
tons is held privately in coin, bullion, or jewelry." (Year-end 2004)

150,000 x 32,150.75 ounces/ton x .8875 = 4.28 billion ounces

Cumulative Gold Production = 4.28 billion ounces

Source 3:

From: [Only registered users see links. ]

"World production at this time climbed to 280 tonnes in 1852 and thence to
almost 300 tonnes as Australia. Production was lifted onto an even higher
place in 1886 with the discovery of the huge gold reefs… in South Africa."

I had to go back and look at the date of the paper
that was my posted link, it looks like the 150 thousand
ton number is correct, a cube less than 75 meters per
side, the link

[Only registered users see links. ]

bears a 1990 date at the bottom, which graphically
illustrates the frantic gold mining activity over the last
20 years or so (2500 tons annually recently).

Which is really not much, not even close to being
enough to back the currency of all nations.

Even more startling is the percentage of gold
mined since the Hunt metal hoarding in 1980.

And it still isn't enough to satisfy demand,
although the price could plummet if the mines
don't reduce production to match any reduced
demand. It would seem the fixing of the price
of gold was a mistake in the first place.
But times were different in the 19th century,
with many periods in the US seeing too few coins
available to support the commerce of a rapidly
growing population, with large numbers of
immigrants.

It appears Nixon did the right thing, or rather
had no choice but to let the price of gold be determined
by the marketplace, if he had anything to do with it.

Gold and silver may have been the big cheese
then, but energy is now, and the value of a man's
labor is altered in a number of ways by the price
and availability of energy.

The other big factor in the cause of inflation
is the constant trend in increase in wages, which
may not have been as persistent before the 1920s.

How much gold would be necessary for that? If the "backing"
for currency was gold, how much would each oz. of gold need
to be worth in, say, bushels of wheat for the currency to be
usable? Is there some upper limit to the value of gold
compared to the values of other commodities? What is it,
and why does this limit exist?

And just why couldn't it be?

I'll leave that argument to others, as it really doesn't
matter to me.

If "the money supply" was the actual amount of coined gold
in existence, why would the U.S. government need to control
it?

What problem? Inflation? Inflation as a problem has
nothing whatsoever to do with the GDP as compared to the
amount of currency in circulation, and everything to do with
the rate of increase in the amount of currency in
circulation.

OK...

Before you "go off" on my post, bear in mind that I do not
favor a statutory gold standard; so don't bother accusing me
of that. I am, however, curious about how you reach your
conclusions.

--
Robert Sturgeon
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.[Only registered users see links. ]

No, it is owned by the US government, in fact one
of the coin bills proposed mentions transferring the mint
to the Federal Reserve System.

Of course not, but then why would anyone
want to do that, all excess profits go to the US Treasury. :-)

It would be nice, I could afford gasoline.

Not a privately held one.

Per credit card, yes, but some people get
a new credit card every year.

What does that have to do with the Federal Reserve
Bank of the US?

There really needs to be a world bank, it helps
many countries that need help, I don't understand
any objection of either the bank or the fund, surely
they are needed, and the inflated price of energy
makes them needed even more.

There is much more involved with the price
of energy than supply and demand, and I still say
the world economy is at risk because of the high prices.

The US has a real problem, a very unusual
problem, some states are approaching essentially
zero unemployment (where there are not enough
people to fill jobs), yet not enough income per
person.
Is it possible other countries have a problem
because of the high cost of energy, I suspect so.